Religious or Philosophical Beliefs

Detects religious or philosophical belief information in person-linked membership, patient, workforce, census, pastoral-care, and accommodation records. The detector recognises explicit belief, affiliation, observance, denomination, and structured religion-field terminology, then raises confidence only for person records and populated belief or accommodation statements. Religious or philosophical beliefs are protected under GDPR Article 9 and Australian anti-discrimination and privacy law. Topic-grade detector, low confidence by design.

Type: regex
Engine: universal
Confidence: low
Confidence justification: Low by design: the attribute has no fixed format. Enforce tiers now require the attribute to be tied to an identified person record (a populated name/DOB/ID field), and 85 also requires a named religion or denomination value plus independent record evidence, so policy text, surveys-in-design and news naming the category stay at 65 discovery.
Jurisdictions: global, au, eu
Regulations: GDPR, Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth)
Frameworks: ISO 27001, NIST CSF, SOC 2
Data categories: pii
Scope: broad
Risk rating: 7
Platform compatibility: Purview: Compatible, GCP DLP: Compatible, Macie: Compatible, Zscaler: Compatible, Palo Alto: Degraded, Netskope: Unsupported

Pattern

(?i)\b(?:religious\s+(?:or\s+philosophical\s+)?beliefs?|philosophical\s+beliefs?|religious\s+affiliations?|faith\s+affiliations?|belief\s+systems?|faith\s+traditions?|religious\s+(?:observance|preference|denominations?|conversion\s+record)|place\s+of\s+worship|(?:religion|faith|denomination)\s*(?::|(?:field|code|response)))

Corroborative evidence keywords

faith, congregation, worship, clergy, denomination, doctrine, spiritual, religion

Proximity: 300 characters

Should match

Patient admission record Patient name: Morgan Ellisdale MRN: 5540921 DOB: 17/03/1968 Religion: Hindu (Shaivism) Pastoral care: chaplaincy visit requested; vegetarian dietary requirement. — Person record with a populated religion value and pastoral-care evidence (85)
Employee file Employee number: E40917 Name: Casey Rourke Notes: requested that religious affiliation not be shared with the roster team. — Person record naming religious affiliation without a populated value (75)
Workplace accommodation request - People and Culture Employee name: Taylor Okafor Staff ID: S-30215 Religious observance: Muslim, fasting during Ramadan Requested: prayer room access at 1pm, shift ending 30 minutes earlier during Ramadan, and religious leave for Eid al-Fitr. Approved by roster manager 02/02/2026. — Workforce accommodation record with staff identifiers, religious observance value and leave/prayer evidence (85)

Should not match

We believe in transparent pricing for all customers. — Generic corporate "believe", not a belief-system disclosure
The museum exhibit covered world religions through history. — Topical/educational mention, no personal disclosure phrase
Religious studies 101 is a required elective this semester. — Academic course listing, no disclosure phrase
Public policy document reports aggregate congregation demographics. — Public aggregate material is not a person-linked belief disclosure
Sample template: patient record with stated faith Example Faith. — Adjacent template language is not a populated belief record
Patient record lists a vegetarian dietary preference. — Sibling preference record does not satisfy the religious-belief primary
Policy guidance: this procedure explains how religious beliefs and religious affiliation details are collected, stored and shared, who may access them and how long they are kept. Staff should read the privacy section before completing any form. It contains no details about any individual. — Policy/guidance text naming the topic without any populated record (65 discovery at most)
Diversity survey Name: ____________________ Employee number: ____________________ Religion: ____________________ Signature: ____________ Date: __/__/____ — Blank form with unpopulated labelled fields (placeholder guard keeps it below 75)
News: the census shows the share of people reporting no religion rose again, and faith traditions in the region continue to diversify. — News/training prose about the topic without a populated record (65 discovery at most)

Known false positives

Generic corporate or educational use of "believe"/"religion"/"religious" (values statements, history/comparative-religion content) has nothing to do with a personal belief-disclosure record. Mitigation: The regex targets full disclosure phrases and structured belief labels rather than the bare words "believe" or "religion"; enforcement requires a person-record context, and the high tier also requires a populated attribution or accommodation signal.